calixipediafandomcom-20200214-history
Hive Gloriana
Hive Gloriana is one of the hives upon the polluted world of Solomon. It is home to the Chancellery Court, and such is the size and complexity of it that a large district of Hive Gloriana is given over to housing it and the infrastructure required to keep it working. Dreaming Dead of Hive Gloriana "I forget the name of the woman who told me the legend of the Old Hive. She was a link to Factor Grucul and rightfully terrified of what I represented. Yet she told me the legend because she wanted to curse me. As I later learned, all who hear the legend must ask the God–Emperor’s blessing lest dark powers take notice. Rin and myself, marked as offworlders by our accents, did not know. It was a last act of defiance by one soon dead. The legend told of dark gods trapped in the Old Hive ruins below... sending up heretic spirits to possess the dreaming and the dead. I gave it no weight at the time---a foolish mistake." –From the journals of Inquisitor Felroth Gelt: 3.582.710.M41 The belief of millions carried across centuries ripples the Calixian warp. Fears take form in the foaming madness that lies within the Immaterium. The hidden truth of Hive Gloriana is that the warp has long stalked the Crushtop alley depths in the form of murder-spirits that possess ruined servitors, summoned and sustained by the retelling of lowhive myths. The Crushtop district of Hive Gloriana upon Solomon is crisscrossed by narrow chasm-alleys, each a full league deep but of barely a stone’s throw between facing hab structures. Denizens descend by the Choking Stair or the steam-hydraulic tithe platforms, and sunlight is soon lost to a canopy of cable bridges, overhangs, and boardwalks. An everpresent haze sinks from uphive promethium refineries and fyceline alchemical plants to cloud these narrow, crowded thoroughfares. The alley depths clear by night, even though night is barely distinguishable from day. Hereditary lumenbearers retreat to caves carved from the crush and communal rooms that were once generatoria. Doors and shutters close, bolts are thrown, and Aquila charms hung and blessed. The blackness is absolute. Nightwalkers and thieves upon lumenlit boardways and cable-bridges half a league above look down and make the sign of the Aquila as a ward against the depths. In the blackest depths lies the crush fundament, an alley floor made of ruins of the ancient hive pressed flat by the weight of years. There on the boundary, outcasts, Sanctioned Thieves, and hopeless, excess workers of the Waiting Guilds tell their tales. These least-citizens believe in ghosts of the old hive, long-dead servants of daemons defeated by the God-Emperor and driven below. Dreams are a gate: dreamers must be protected by prayers and Aquila charms, lest murderous ghosts rise from the crush and wear their bodies. The lowhivers believe that servitors and the recently dead are those who dream most deeply. Crushtop mortuaries are shrines to the God-Emperor, and any appearance of labor-servitors in the alleys is cause for disturbance and rumor. The eyes of a possessed servitor are glowing pools steaming with warp-light, its churning dreams filled with murderous desire. Makeshift knife gripped in metal fingers, facial actuators clicking and twisting in ways beyond their design, the servitor hunts its lone victims through the night alley depths, feeding upon the terror of their final moments. In the alley depths, many mornings see ritually dismembered bodies discovered at the crush boundary. The low-hivers make the sign of the Aquila and hurry to raise the remains to their shrine-mortuaries. Thus, the warp continues to corrupt labor-servitors one by one whilst the Inquisition searches Hive Gloriana for witch-cults and heretics that don’t exist.